by Ben Philippe
There’s Obe, the sharp playwright with sinister eyes and the severe cheekbones of a budding mobster villain who tells me he’s Jewish when we meet and then our second year says that he’s not Jewish when it comes up again. He gives me a coy shrug and laughs to himself when I ask why, and I resolve to dislike him from that moment. Random lies as an exertion of power on other people is my stage, and I don’t like an open mic-er making me his audience.
The other playwright, Rayna, is dynamic, political, and confident with enough whimsy to balance it all and dynamic elocution to boost. She teaches me how to pronounce gauge, which comes ten years too late. (“Gay-jh,” not “goh-j” like mauve. English truly is a nonsense language.) Her laugh is delightful, and she makes precise points by joining her two fingers together when talking. She’s a graduate of Columbia, too, but older. She seems right at home in Austin, arranging get-togethers and socializing like a real person rather than a feral New Yorker always wary of other people’s motives and always aware of the importance of concealing your own.
Cerim is there to network. His friendly smiles and eye contact feel like they come with a timeshare offer in his back pocket. The distrust starts at the back of my neck and he naturally will be the first one of us to sell a book.
Everyone is easy to stay away from. I wish this was high school and that I could grab my tray of whole-milk cartons and wet spaghetti and take it to another table, but there is no such option. We are each other’s cohorts.
“This,” Elizabeth McCracken, the star teacher, says, eyeing us all meaningfully. “This is what matters. The people. You will know each other in a way other people can’t. As friends and writers.”
Three of us are Black. But no kinship exists beyond that. There’s me; Ikome, an African fiction writer who writes of Africa; and Water, who writes slavery tales in spaceships. I wonder what my thing is, in their eyes.
There’s an underlying air of diversity to our incoming class. Lowered standards, maybe? Pad the class with a rainbow of people, regardless of actual ability to write? For a long time, I wonder if that’s how people see me: as a token Black writer, here to provide narratives to fit their narratives. “I don’t fit here” is a better refrain than “Maybe I don’t belong here.” It doesn’t matter except to those of us who feel strange cashing nearly $30,000 a year from the estate of James A. Michener.
Each year, a new cohort of twelve joins the three-year program. They all feel temporary. Future likes on Facebook through whom I realize how bored of Facebook I am.
I like some of them, like Will over at the twin New Writers Project. But Will isn’t as mean as I would want. Sometimes, when we hang out alone, I wish he would say viciously catty things about our classmates, but he doesn’t, and it leaves me feeling bitchy, but the man is wholesome, thoughtful, with his wild uncertain twenties a decade behind him. He’s the youngest-looking thirty-seven-year-old man I’ve ever met. He smiles and does yoga and apparently there is still room in my heart for handsome white men with long hair who smile and do yoga and write poetry. (I’m disappointed in myself, too.)
In quick succession, I receive both the best and worst writing advice of my life while at Michener. During a seminar break, a visiting professor, casually and without meaning to, successfully imparts that: “Nobody needs to see this story that’s in your head. Nobody asked for it. For most of your first readers—classmates, potential agents, underpaid slush pile readers—it will be work. So, it’s only polite to make this unnecessary, unsolicited thing remotely interesting.”
During a workshop, a previously described classmate proposes an improvement on a story of mine they really enjoyed.
“It’s such a universal story! The main character doesn’t even have to be Black for it to work.” Others nod approvingly. It’s buried in a sea of compliments about my wit, which makes it hard to contradict. Or even register until later that night, while brushing my teeth. (Trust me: they’ll all be Black until arthritis makes the keyboard a torture device, Cerim, you prick.)
On the screenwriting side of things, across campus at the Radio-Television-Film department, I’m flanked by tall beefy men in plaid shirts and impossibly specific graphic tees with cars who meet at every corner of Austin. I’m too embarrassed to ask for a ride and instead learn to love my apartment, a palace by New York–dorm standards, right on campus, six minutes door-to-door from the Michener Center with a pool.
It’s right next to a bar—The Crown & Anchor—a north campus staple that, to someone else, would be the setting of a sitcom-like home base, where I meet a cast of regulars and shoot the breeze for hours in the evening. Instead, I occasionally grab Styrofoam plates of coagulated nachos and rush up home to my apartment kept at 66 degrees even in the cooler months. I’m hot all the time in Austin. Crossing campus leaves me drenched in sweat. I adopt a permanent costume. Dress shirt with a colorful undershirt beneath.
I gain weight again, so no T-shirts. I masturbate, but only at night, to keep things romantic.
The writing around the Michener program is strong but not brilliant. We’re all trying and figuring it out. I’m almost disappointed that I’m not wholly outclassed. That would have been a story, too, I think. The writer who didn’t have what it takes. I realize that what I want here is a story.
I write stories every week. Random tales of awkward social interactions that will eventually make up a check-mark thesis. My collection awards me a master of fine arts and nine book rejections, and one in-person rejection at a restaurant with an agent who loved the title but found the content underwhelming and presumably wanted the opportunity to tell my fully suited self in person with a cup of coffee and an earnest hug. Hmm, I still like the title, so I won’t tell you here. I might use it one day. Writers are petty that way. And back there, in Austin, Texas, was when I was at my most writerly.
I avoid the program’s parties and gatherings around the department. I flirt with a light depression, thinking of the other paths my life could be taking in those three years. I watch all of The West Wing. Twice. I purchase old DVDs of Frasier.
We talk about our writing habits and perform our new author identities to one another, for one another. Flirty, unassuming, friendly while secretly networking for future blurbs of unwritten books. This is the time, the arena. Writers who write about and against each other.
I want to write inky-black comedies, but instead I write dysfunctional and quiet short stories. The type of MFAs that people mock and that strike tedious debates about whether or not writing should happen in carpeted classrooms inside college campuses, or scribbled on the backs of napkins pinching your bloody nose after a bar brawl out there in the real world. The reflection paper of my thesis will read:
Nothing in life is as potent or inevitable as one stranger looking to another and thinking to themselves, “I like this,” “I want this,” “I could love this.” In the stories that follow, reckless, occasionally loathsome characters run forward with eyes closed and arms open, tripping themselves in pursuit of the one thing they believe will make them whole.
In “This is Having,” well-meaning narcissist Reggie is unable to properly understand his girlfriend’s attempts at personal growth, mistaking them for dissatisfaction with him.
In “Arms In, Elbows Wet,” Dan is prone to extreme mood swings triggered by his pathological fear of being left behind by the people he loves.
In “Lying Rots Your Teeth,” stuttering Sammy is driven to murder by a fraternal inferiority complex while the universe laughs at his expense.
I spend so much time up there, chronicling the mating habits of fictional assholes in bursts of nine thousand words, that my ass feels homey. Away from the laptop, I try to remember what it’s like to like people. To go through the paces of chitchat, lunch, breakfast, texting, and develop intimacy that way. Boring. I’m prickly and can’t quite calibrate myself into this crowd. God, I miss New York. And Nina and Morgan.
I want a story. Being liked by people is kind of a story. That’s essentiall
y the gist of “Snow White.” I begin to smile more until it snaps into a frown. Screw that. I’m disgusted by the affable foreigner schtick I’ve perfected. I want to be hated and fight back.
I want to be dragged into an alley and presented with a little plate of hard drugs that become the love of my life. I want to be arrested—or at least get my head pushed against a cop car.
I’m on a fully funded three-year hiatus in which the fuel is real-life experience, and I’m wasting it keeping a clean kitchen and going to bed lonely at 10:15 p.m.
I bite my nails to the stubs and Band-Aid the chapped nail beds, ending up looking like a worn-out guitarist. At night, I get restless. There’s an invisible clock ticking over my head, counting down from MFA funding, twentysomething freedom, and life. In that order. I get into the habit of kicking off the covers, grabbing my keys, and launching myself into the night without a destination. 11 p.m., 1 a.m., 2 a.m. These get later and later. If you want to get hit, you gotta play in traffic. I’m looking for the sort of people looking for trouble.
I crash a fraternity party on campus where I melt into the crowd and collect high fives. “I’m Phil, a friend of Dave’s,” I say and then say again louder, shouting over loud music in the backyard of a fraternity house filled with twenty-two-year-olds in six-packs. Yes, in. Six-packs are apparel you can temporarily own. You wear them and then misplace them never to find them again. Speaking from experience here.
(Sidebar: “I’m a friend of Dave’s” will gain you access into most frat parties. Dave is somewhere in the back right now and could have a Black friend. He’s cool that way.)
After two beers and chitchat about the recent Game of Thrones season-4 finale, I head home with two new Facebook contacts that I’ll never speak to again.
I want a story.
A week later, I have dinner with my classmates at a visiting professor’s house. He’s made too many quesadillas and wears sandals.
A classmate, one year ahead of me and already published, offers me a ride home. She seems to feel bad for me. I’m falling behind in an environment where academic success is only measured by personal and creative growth.
“No, thanks.” I smile. “I have a friend swinging by to pick me up.”
“Another big party?”
I shrug coyly. There’s no friend. No party and no friend. I like that I might have a partying reputation around the department. I know this isn’t true. But for them to notice would require paying attention to one another instead of just talking about one another, which is a ridiculous thing to expect from authors.
I watch her leave, then I start to walk and eventually keep walking. Fight face on: Why not?
A homeless person rolling a cart filled with empty cans crosses the street from me when we pass each other at an overpass. Of the two of us, I’m the stranger in the night without a destination or point, I realize. I walk on, hoping for anything that might amount to a true story I’ll look back on and shake my head with a smile, thinking of my time in Texas.
One evening, I go on Craigslist and trade messages with multiple strangers. I don’t have the body confidence to be the type of guy who sends floppy dick photos, biting his own T-shirt up and angling the phone just right in front of his stained bathroom mirror, so I settle for witty repartee.
A Craigslist hookup is a story. Dating app profiles are too clean, too dull for the story I have in mind. That’s just sleazy enough of a good Texan tale. There are a few bites but ultimately, the most real connection comes from [email protected].
We begin to email a lot, back and forth, replies coming seconds apart. The intimacy is sudden and weird enough that we’re both comfortable in this format.
I’ve never been with a Black guy before.
Me neither. Okay, well, once. He was my uncle, though, so it was okay.
Her emoji sobs hysterically five times in a row. I’m dangerous, unknown, but witty enough to be safe.
Come over.
No. You’ll twist my nipples and rob me.
It makes no sense and she laughs in writing again. I start to doze off in bed, and she sends three more emails in a row.
Wake up!
I’m bored!
I’m serious; come over.
She eggs me on to take a cab to her apartment complex, a building named Oceanwide that is nowhere near a body of water.
In a Tasmanian devil whirlwind, I’m freshly showered, groomed, and ready to be murdered at 2 a.m. The cab driver is Black, too, and chuckles, catching me fan out my pit in the car, nervous despite the AC.
“Should I still come up?” I ask the intercom outside the gates of her apartment complex. I realize it’s the first time we’re speaking.
There’s silence. She’s looking down at me through the blinds but I can’t see her. I wave. The awkward Dan Humphrey wave from the first episode of Gossip Girl. I’ve practiced it before.
“Yes, one second,” she eventually says.
I go up. She invites me in, invites me to sit down.
“Okay,” I say, sitting on her couch with both hands on my knees as if waiting for a haircut.
She laughs, offers me a glass of fireball, and then she performs oral sex on me in her living room. I bump my knee against a crowded coffee table when it’s my turn to return the favor.
“One second, okay?”
I nod.
She disappears into her bedroom and comes out carrying a bunch of framed photos facing down, looking apologetic, and then leads me in by the hand. I wish this was a real date. I want to ask her about the knitting kit, the French poster, the rice cooker. It’s the brand I’ve been wanting to buy.
I smell Axe Chocolate on the sheets, which I’m not wearing. It’s as vivid as that time I applied three coats before a party in high school. It’s not the disgusting, seedy, messy sex either of us expected. There’s a lot of kissing. If she climaxes, it is self-generated enthusiasm. I deserve little to no credit.
In the morning her face doesn’t look like a glazed donut. We thank each other. She offers me coffee and is relieved when I decline.
“I’m gonna shower, okay?”
“Okay.” I nod, understanding. I’ll be gone.
I leave with a headache as the water runs loudly in the bathroom although it doesn’t sound like there’s a body under it yet. She has a story now, I realize, walking to the bus stop in the morning, watching joggers go by. Meanwhile, I can’t tell if I’m closer to one of my own or not.
Twenty-Two
Sure, I’ll Be Your Accessory to Larceny
Here’s another thing—no, the thing, in fact, italics, emphasis, and all—about Black people.
No, it’s not the slavery or the sickle cell or even the fact that we get to use the clear, crisp version of the N-word with a hard “er” on the tail of it. No, it’s something much simpler. I’d use the word primal if it weren’t for the unfortunate connotation.
It’s that we have something in common. Something others don’t. Something that deep down makes us like each other—even if only a little—in spaces that, at a glance, don’t belong to us.
It’s similar to spotting someone in a crowded airport whose T-shirt claims a common alma mater somewhere out East. It’s the same kinship that leaves my cousin Watson up on his lawn chair at barbecues telling jokes like “What do you get when you put a Blood, a Crip, a businessman, and two guns in an elevator?”
That’s the very joke that echoes in your head as you hear, “Hey, man, got the time?” in broad daylight cutting through a parking garage and then an alley between Nueces Street and Rio Grande Street.
“Um, what?” you ask, removing your headphones.
The man seems annoyed he has to repeat himself. “You’ve got the time, brother!”
It’s an exclamation point, not a question mark, but you look down at your phone, even though your heart’s beating faster and you don’t know why yet.
The kinship that two seconds later makes the sudden knifepoint at your throa
t and the railing against your neck something less than completely overwhelming.
He holds it sloppily, leaving you more than enough room to breathe, and even to potentially shout. You’ve never held a knife to anyone’s neck—never thought to—but you’ve watched enough of The Wire to think it ought to be placed right under the Adam’s apple and flipped around to give you the edge of the blade instead. It’s that exact sort of sloppiness that keeps disposable henchmen and thugs on the big screen.
You wait for the fear to kick in but for some reason, it doesn’t. Under this bright, deadly, Texan sun, you’re both the exact shade, so, no, brother, bro, homey, homedog, nigga, nigger; I will not give you my iPhone. You must be out your goddamn mind, boy. Yes, as a matter of fact, I do think you’s playin’ and if the blade hadn’t just shifted to a more dangerous and competent position just now, I would even be inclined to tell you as much.
After a few seconds, this stupidity starts to feel a lot like courage. You start to think of a clever Facebook status update to cover these events. “It’s the old iPhone. You’re gonna have to mug someone new in a few days,” you hear yourself scoff out of nowhere because suddenly and without much precedent, the coward has balls.
Besides, aren’t you a writer? The fellowship stipend says so. Isn’t there a certain romance to dying stupidly and before your time? Isn’t that the story you’ve been pacing around for? The image of Mom choking up during the eulogy is the only thing that ultimately makes you bundle up your headphones and hand the whole thing over. She hates public speaking almost as much as you love it but would feel compelled to speak on that day. To put her in that position seems cruel, but you can’t help it. You lower your voice and force every neuron in your brain to lose your foreign and harmless accent, if only for the space of the next few words: